


You look good wearing my future

by brynnmck



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU - Some Kind of Wonderful, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, I did not initially intend for there to be sex in this, No Twincest, Pining, Soft Jaime Lannister, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, also there are nicknames, because Nikolaj and I both feel strongly that Jaime and Brienne should get it on, but then there was, good things happen when best friends make out, is certainly a tag I just used
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:40:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22277251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brynnmck/pseuds/brynnmck
Summary: "Well," Jaime answered after a moment of thought, "you've got the venue, you've got the perfect gift, and you've got… you. The only thing I can think of is: what are you going to do if he wants to…" When she looked over, he was waggling his eyebrows suggestively, made even more suggestive by the way he was splayed out on the couch. "You know."A littleSome Kind of WonderfulAU.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 98
Kudos: 374





	You look good wearing my future

**Author's Note:**

> Since I left my current J/B WIP on an angsty cliffhanger, I wanted to post something sweet and fluffy as a counterpoint. :D 
> 
> A few weeks ago a friend of mine was talking on Twitter about formative scenes from movie romances, and posted the Keith/Watts first kiss scene from _Some Kind of Wonderful_ , and I realized that a) that movie and that scene specifically was _extremely_ formative for me as well, and b) I very much needed a Jaime/Brienne version of it to exist in the world. So here we are! It's been a while since I've seen the whole movie, but I remember watching it a few years back and thinking it held up pretty well, so I would definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't seen it. (Though if you are not already into women, Mary Stuart Masterson in SKOW might well spur some changes in you. She is A LOT. So PREPARE YOURSELVES.)
> 
> Oh, and Watts is a drummer in the original, and it is hot af, but I gave Jaime a guitar here because I am a weak woman, and also because I've dated too many drummers. (Okay, two drummers. But that was enough.) (Sorry, other drummers, I'm sure you're wonderful people! Just SOME OF YOU are skewing the curve!)
> 
> ANYWAY. Let's check in on our clueless heroes!

When Brienne slipped into her dad's garage after she got home from school, with her new acquisition--fresh from the jeweler's--heavy in her backpack, Jaime was already waiting for her. He was stretched across the ancient couch they'd set up there years ago, fingers strumming idly across his unplugged guitar.

He smiled up at her. "Hail, the Blue Knight."

She gave him a mock bow. "Ser Goldenhand." It was an old call-and-response, based on the characters they'd been playing on the day they'd met, when Jaime had been ten and Brienne had been eight and engaged in beating several of the boys at their school with a foam sword at recess. When said boys had jumped her the next afternoon on her way home, Jaime had appeared out of nowhere to help fight them off, and the two of them had spent almost as much time in each other's company as out of it ever since.

"I thought you were supposed to go to some strategy meeting this afternoon," Brienne went on. Jaime had wanted to go to art school, and his father had wanted him to go to business school; their "compromise" had been that Jaime could take art classes on the side, but he would learn the family business, which was what Tywin had wanted most all along. Two years in, it wasn't going great.

Sure enough, Jaime shrugged in what had become well-established shorthand for _I ditched Varys and came here to hang out with you so I can eat all your food and look at you with giant puppydog eyes if you suggest I should be elsewhere_. Since Lannister Corp was basically the embodiment of corporate evil, it was hard for Brienne to argue with the general thesis, even if she wished, for Jaime's sake, that he'd just cut the cord completely. 

"Not important," Jaime declared. "Were you victorious on your quest?"

She nodded and tapped his legs to get him to move them out of the way, to which he responded by simply lifting them up. Too giddy with excitement to argue with him, she just rolled her eyes and sat down anyway, letting his calves rest across her lap. He tucked his feet on the far side of her hips, moved his guitar out of the way, and held out an imperious hand. "Let's see it."

She took the black jeweler's box out of her bag and held it out to him. He cracked the top of it, peeked inside, and whistled low.

"Wow." 

With careful fingers, he drew the wide leather wrist cuff out of its cradle, turning it over in his hands. Brienne didn't have the best vantage currently, but she'd looked at it so many times already that she could see it perfectly in her mind's eye. A raised circle on the front of the dark brown cuff sported a sword worked in gold--a painstaking replica of historical renderings of the Blue Knight's weapon--with small chips of sapphire as accents. On the reverse side, where it would lie against the wearer's wrist, was a functional compass.

It was a gift, but it was also an invitation: during the past few years, Brienne had built up a following for her website, _Shouldn't You Be_ , where she made videos on car repair and self-defense and other pursuits that weren't typically encouraged unless you happened to be a boy. Over her dad's protests, she was going to take the year after graduation to travel Westeros teaching workshops--for as minimal a fee as possible--to anyone who wanted to take them. She'd been saving for it for months, taking every odd job anyone would give her, and had run a successful crowdfunding campaign besides, and now she was barely a month away from finally setting out. 

All she needed to make her dream complete was a brave companion. And she was desperately hoping that dashing, boyishly handsome Renly Baratheon would agree to that position.

Jaime snapped the box shut and tossed it back to her. "It's amazing, Blue." Even after all these years, that was still his favorite nickname for her, seeing as, according to him, it matched both her eyes and her often-serious moods. "If he doesn't appreciate it, he's an idiot."

Given that Jaime himself had sketched the design to her specifications, she'd been pretty sure that he would like it; still, she huffed out a relieved sigh that he thought the finished product lived up to their vision of it. "And I called the restaurant earlier to confirm, so that's all taken care of." The restaurant in question was one of the nicest in town, she'd enlisted Margaery and Sansa to help her pick the perfect outfit, and--most importantly--as of a few days ago, Renly had actually agreed to go out with her.

That last part was the part she was having the most trouble wrapping her brain around. She'd had a crush on him for so long that the prospect of literally going on a date with him felt surreal, like she'd woken up to find someone else's face staring back at her in the mirror.

With everything checked off her list except waiting, nerves were starting to gnaw at her, and she stood abruptly, dumping Jaime's legs off her lap; she heard one of his feet thunk to the floor behind her as she headed toward where her dad's latest repair job was sitting with the hood open. "Can you think of anything I'm forgetting?" she asked, grabbing a wire puller to start the process of removing the spark plugs they were supposed to be replacing.

"Well," Jaime answered after a moment of thought, "you've got the venue, you've got the perfect gift, and you've got… you. The only thing I can think of is: what are you going to do if he wants to…" When she looked over, he was waggling his eyebrows suggestively, made even more suggestive by the way he was splayed out on the couch. "You know."

Brienne's face went hot, and she spluttered. "Jaime Lannister. I am _not_ having sex with him on the first date."

Now it was Jaime's turn to splutter; he held up both hands in front of him like he was trying to ward off the mental image. "Agh, gods, I was _definitely_ not suggesting that!"

Brienne considered being offended by his apparent disgust at the idea, but she needed all the confidence she could get right now, so she decided that he was just weirded out in an "I don't want to think about my sister that way" kind of way. Of course, he _had_ actually thought about his stepsister that way for several years, and progressed beyond thoughts into action, too, but whatever. Maybe he'd learned the error of his ways when Cersei had gone off to Dorne for college and they'd barely heard from her since.

"You brought it up!" she told him instead, though it came out a little more snappishly than she meant it to. "Unless you were asking me how I planned to respond if he suggested parcheesi." With the boots removed on the spark plugs, she snapped the extender socket into place on her ratchet and went to work unscrewing them.

"What _is_ parcheesi, anyway?" Jaime wondered, as easily distracted as ever.

"I have no idea," she admitted, "so I'm pretty sure Renly doesn't either, so I think we're good." 

"Glad we can check that off the list, then," he said, grinning. Then he levered himself up on one elbow. "But what I _actually_ meant, before your dirty mind got hold of it, was…" He grabbed the guitar for a dramatic, if somewhat tinny, chord. "Kissing."

Her hand slipped off the ratchet. "Kissing?"

"Yeah. Have you ever kissed anyone before, Blue?" His grin widened, sliding slyly across his face. So sure of the answer. 

She raised her chin. Thank all the gods she could honestly tell him, "Yes." 

The speed with which that wiped the grin off his face was _incredibly_ satisfying. His eyebrow arched and something flared in his eyes. "Who?" he asked sharply, she assumed out of a brotherly and not-entirely-unsexist resolve to beat up whoever had impugned her honor.

"None of your business," she shot back, not about to confess that the one person she had ever kissed had been Margaery, at a slumber party, in the one round of Spin the Bottle that Brienne had let herself get harangued into before she'd declared very firmly that she was going to go read for a while instead.

He clucked his tongue against the back of his teeth, his mask of detached smugness descending again. "Very interesting. So you feel like you're up to the challenge, then."

Another wave of heat washed over her at the thought, and she turned her attention back to the spark plugs. "I don't really anticipate there being anything challenging about kissing Renly, if we get to that point." Unless she counted "not passing out" as a challenge.

"Well, what if you swoon?" he asked, and she glared at him, though there was at least a nice change of pace in the fact that Jaime was one of the only people in the world who would imply that she was capable of doing anything so delicate. "I'm just saying. First impressions are important."

It was too close to home, and she tossed her ratchet aside with a growl, enjoying the way he jumped when it clattered across the concrete floor. "Fuck off, Jaime, I'm already nervous enough about this! I thought you said you were going to help me, not make it worse."

"I am trying to help you!" he protested. "I only meant that--that if you want to practice, I'm here for you."

The idea was so ridiculous, so completely out of left field, that Brienne could feel her jaw actually hanging open like she was a cartoon character. "Practice?" she repeated, when she could speak.

He lifted a shoulder, gaze skipping briefly to the side before coming back to hers. "Yeah."

_"Kissing?"_

"Yes."

"With _you_?" Her voice was climbing half an octave with every phrase.

His breath huffed out between his lips. "I mean, I know I'm not _Renly_ ," and now _his_ voice went high on the name, accompanied by a melodramatic sigh, "but. You could pretend."

She narrowed her eyes at him, waiting for the punchline. But nothing came, just increasingly weighted silence, until he set the guitar on the couch, held up his hands, and got to his feet. "All right, never mind. I'm gonna--"

"Wait," rushed out of her mouth. Because she _wasn't_ experienced, and she _might_ pass out, and while Jaime wasn't Renly, if there was one thing Brienne had learned from fencing, it was that repetition was crucial to learning. "Maybe… maybe it's not such a bad idea."

She saw something flicker over his face, there and gone too quickly for her to identify it. "Okay," he said. And then proceeded to remain completely still.

All right. "So... do you just want me to…?" She made an awkward half-motion toward him--this had been his idea, dammit, why was she the one who was supposed to make the first move?--but he blinked a couple of times, shook himself like he was coming out of some sort of trance, and started walking toward her. It seemed to take him years to cross the couple dozen feet between them, and she watched him approach, settling back against the front edge of the car while what felt like flight of tiny dragons began flapping their little wings in the pit of her stomach.

"Okay," he said again, when he was finally within her reach. He cleared his throat. "So. First question: where do your hands go?"

"I--" she started, lifting them, and then he chuckled a little.

"Hold up." He grabbed a nearby rag and started wiping her hands with it, cradling her fingers between his as he drew the cloth across them; she winced the black-brown grease smears in their wake. 

"Sorry," she mumbled, embarrassed, but he only smiled at her.

"I don't mind," he told her, "but Renly has all those designer shirts, you know." He made it sound like a character flaw, which was hilarious given that Jaime had more than a few designer shirts, himself.

He wasn't wearing one now, though, just a t-shirt so faded that it was only because she'd seen it a hundred times that she knew it was from a sci-fi movie they'd watched together almost as many times as he'd worn the shirt. For someone who'd said he didn't mind the grease, he was certainly thorough about getting rid of it--one at a time, he enveloped each finger in cloth and massaged it all the way down, paying close attention to the webs between them, making a shudder skip down her spine.

That made him glance up at her through the eyelashes she'd always envied.

"Sorry," she managed again. "Tickles."

"Hmm." The noise rumbled at the base of his throat. He tossed the cloth onto the exposed engine behind her. "So anyway," he said, voice pitched low, "you were going to put your hands somewhere."

She swallowed hard against the motion of her stomach-dragons, who seemed to be growing, and lifted her hands again. "Doesn't it depend on where his hands are?"

"Nope. They go around the back of his neck," he told her firmly, like there was a definitive rulebook somewhere. She was deeply skeptical of his specificity, but while she was pretty sure he'd only kissed a handful of people at the most, that was still a higher number than she could claim, so. She shrugged and linked her hands behind his neck.

She could see his Adam's apple bob as he moved half a step closer into the space between her legs, and rested his own hands on her hips. 

She couldn't help it; the nerves and the ludicrousness of it all--Jaime, she was about to kiss _Jaime_ \--made laughter bubble out of her all at once, like champagne poured too quickly into a glass. Jaime snorted with frustration and backed off, rolling his eyes.

"I don't have to do this, you know."

"I'm sorry," she said, still snickering, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm--" She grabbed his belt loops and tugged him back in. "I'm sorry. No more laughing, I promise." 

He scowled at her, his ego clearly wounded by her lack of swooning. Amused but genuinely contrite--she would have been mortified to be laughed at, if their positions were reversed--she hooked her arms around his neck again, this time raking her fingernails lightly over his scalp for good measure. It was cheating, since she knew from years of reading to him while he sprawled with his head in her lap that every time she stroked his hair like that, he practically purred like an overgrown cat, but it worked. His eyelids fluttered half-shut and then back open, and he let his hands settle on her hips again.

For a long moment, neither one of them moved, and from this vantage, Brienne couldn't help but look at him: the elegant lines of his cheekbones and jaw, the shaggy ends of his hair that should've been cut weeks ago. Since she was possessed of functioning eyesight, Brienne was aware that Jaime was almost offensively pretty; hells, even if she hadn't been able to see, she would've still heard various classmates of various genders sighing over him every time he showed up to walk home with her after school. Given that he was the person she knew best in the world, though, and the one who knew her best, and that that had been the case since all they'd cared about was bashing each other over the head with foam swords, knowing that Jaime was handsome had always been in roughly the same category as knowing that other planets existed in the solar system. It was undeniably true and occasionally useful, mostly for giving him shit about his vanity, but it was overall a fact that wasn't and could never be related to her life in any way.

Watching him now, though--the flare in his bottle-green eyes as he started leaning in, a centimeter at a time--it seemed suddenly, almost unbearably relevant.

On a rush of something like panic, she closed her own eyes and closed the space between them, pressing her mouth to his.

He made a surprised _mmph_ noise against her, and for a second she cursed herself for messing it up, giving him something to tease her about, but he didn't pull back or crack up, just adjusted so they fit more closely together. His lips were softer than she expected, warming as they rested against hers, slightly chapped in a way that added tiny spikes of contrast. She let him lead at first, and he went carefully: changing pressure ever so slightly, changing angles, kissing one corner of her mouth and then the other. Letting her see what she liked best. When her mouth had relaxed from its initial uncertain pucker and she was starting to do some experimentation on her own, he flicked his tongue against the inside of her upper lip, a question.

She shivered and answered by opening up, letting him in, and he made a growling noise in his chest that seemed to pulse right in the center of the rapidly growing heat between her legs. His tongue was slick and hot and intent, and she found herself responding eagerly, wanting to meet him and match him like she always did. He tasted like his favorite cinnamon gum, and his chest was a warm wall against her; his fingers tightened at the fraying waistband of her jeans and she stood up from the edge of the car, one of her legs hitching up over the side of his hip out of a mindless desire to be as close to him as possible. She twined her foot around the back of his thigh and pulled him toward her center, toward where she was aching, and the glorious pressure right where she needed it had her moaning into his mouth, a sound she'd never in her life made outside of her own bedroom. 

When he suddenly tore himself away and stepped back, she almost fell over. "What--" She tried to get her brain back online, her mouth around actual words. "Wait, did I--" She clutched the car for balance.

"You don't need practice, you're good," he said, breathless, backing away, limping slightly, and… was _he_ blushing, now? "You're good," he repeated. "I'll see you tomorrow night, 7 p.m. sharp," and then he yanked the garage door open. She caught a glimpse of a grease smudge on the back of his jeans, after all.

"Jaime!" she called after him, still dizzy and trying to piece together what was happening, "you don't have to--that was nice! You're… it was nice!" 

His laugh had an agonized edge to it. "Tomorrow, Blue," he yelled over his shoulder, and then he disappeared down the end of the driveway.

* * * * * * *

Despite all her careful planning, there ended up being two major surprises in Brienne's long-awaited date with Renly: the most consequential and inconvenient one was Loras Tyrell showing up just after dessert had been served and begging Renly to love him instead. The bigger surprise, though, was that after a dinner of awkward silences broken occasionally by even more awkward conversation, as she was watching Renly and Loras laugh and sniffle and shakily kiss, Brienne actually found herself rooting for them.

When Renly had given her an apologetic hug and vanished off into the starlit night with his new boyfriend, Brienne sighed, paid the bill, and made her way to the parking lot. And there was Jaime, leaning against the side of her dad's prized classic Destrier with one leg crossed over the other in front of him, twirling his chauffeur's hat on his finger, with the street lights burnishing his hair. She'd initially budgeted for a driver for the night, but Jaime had insisted on filling the position himself; he'd shown up in full regalia that he'd acquired from the gods knew where, giving her a much-needed laugh to burst the tension of her pre-date jitters.

Neither one of them had said a word about their little practice session the night before, and seeing as her emotional plate was a little overfull at the moment, Brienne was currently hoping they never would.

In any case, while a large part of her was grateful for a friendly face--her best friend's face, to be exact--she dreaded explaining the whole thing, even to him. As she got closer, though, she could tell by the wry, sympathetic twist of his mouth that he must have seen Renly and Loras leaving. 

She put her back against the freshly-detailed car, next to him, and handed him the small foil packet in her hand. "I brought you dessert."

He raised an eyebrow, and she could _feel_ a comment about Renly's sloppy seconds just desperate to burst out of his mouth, but he only said "Thanks" and opened it up. It was not, in fact, Renly's abandoned slice of lemon pie; it was a gooey dark chocolate brownie, Jaime's favorite, and the least Brienne had felt like she could do after he'd helped her so much with planning and execution.

Not that it had made any difference in the result, but. She could hardly blame Jaime for that.

Jaime took a massive bite of the brownie and hummed appreciatively, offering the rest to her as he chewed. Brienne spared a thought for her dress--a sparkling gold thing that she would never have dared to buy if Sansa hadn't passionately asserted that it made her look like a goddess, which was blatantly ridiculous but Brienne appreciated the good intentions--and then decided she needed chocolate to soothe her wounds more than she needed an unstained nice dress, so she took a large bite, herself.

"Did you know?" she asked after a few seconds, around her mouthful of brownie. Now that the initial adrenaline rush was fading, the feeling of having generally been an enormous fool was starting to sink in.

Jaime shrugged. "I'd heard rumors, same as you. But there are lots of rumors about lots of people." He tapped the side of his foot against hers. "Some people even think you and I are dating."

She snorted ruefully. "Oh, believe me, I know." Not only did a portion of Brienne's followers ship them based on Jaime's periodic appearances in her videos, but for the first full year of Brienne's friendship with Margaery, Margaery had flat-out refused to believe that Jaime and Brienne weren't secretly making out at every available opportunity. Their repeated conversations about it had sparked increasingly-less-patient denials from Brienne, as well as several confusing dreams that had made it difficult for her to look Jaime in the eye for a while, until finally Margaery had started dating Sansa and had become too happily preoccupied with her own love life to pry quite so much into other people's. "I guess it does kind of ease the sting that it's not specifically _me_ that he's not into, it's women in general," she mused, looking for the silver lining.

"That's the spirit," Jaime told her, mouth half-curved. "I'm sure if he _was_ into women, he'd be totally into you."

"Yes, I think we can definitely assume that based on how many guys are beating down my door on a regular basis," Brienne said dryly, and he scoffed and hooked an arm around her shoulders.

"That's only because they don't know you like I do," he said, pulling her closer so he could press a kiss to the side of her head.

Brienne mentally filed that away with _they're just intimidated by you_ as Nice Things Friends Say To Excuse How No One Wants To Date You, but as with Sansa and the dress, she appreciated the attempt. Suddenly exhausted, she let herself tip sideways until her head was resting on Jaime's shoulder. Though the angle hurt her neck a bit, it was worth it for the familiar warmth of him, the smell of cinnamon running under rich chocolate, the rise and fall of his shoulder as he breathed, the reassuring fact that she knew the heart beating down there in his chest as well as she knew her own. A few rebellious nerve endings--lingering unwanted guests from their kiss last night--perked up hopefully at his nearness, but she told them to get their shit together and shut the fuck up, and moved a tiny bit closer.

"I'm glad you're here," she said on a sigh.

"Me too." She felt as much as heard it, the vibration of his throat against the top of her head. His fingers flexed open on her shoulder, then closed again. "Blue--"

But she was already talking, much too amused by the thought that had popped into her head. "Hey, how about we do one of those things where if we're both still single by the time we turn thirty, we move in together and live a happy bachelor life forever?" It was an appealing fantasy: staying up much too late marathoning "people making cool shit" reality shows, bouncing her business ideas off him until she found something that made his eyes light up, something he'd actually enjoy doing; even bickering over whose turn it was to do the dishes had a comforting cast to it, seeing as bickering with him was one of the foundations of her life at this point. 

Underneath her temple, his shoulder had stopped its steady movement. "Bachelors, huh?"

"Yeah, there should really be a gender-neutral term for that, right? All the terms for single women past like twenty-five are some bullshit patriarchal thing. Maybe that should be my next video topic, how we can push--"

Right in the middle of her sentence, Jaime nudged her until she was standing upright again, then withdrew his arm and stepped away from her. "I have to go." His jaw was tight with tension, and Brienne blinked, stunned by the sudden shift.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I just--early meeting tomorrow." He opened the car door, tossed his hat inside, then closed it again, with quite a bit more force than was necessary. Brienne winced automatically, imagining what her dad would say if he'd seen that little maneuver, but while she had no idea what was going on with Jaime, at least she knew it wasn't the time to chide him over his treatment of inanimate objects.

"Hey. Since when do you care about meetings?" she challenged instead.

"My dad is always on my ass about _not_ going to meetings, now you're on my ass about going to meetings--pretty hard to sort out what you all want, you know that?" His laugh was short and brittle. Something contracted hard inside Brienne's chest, and she ran back over the last few minutes in her mind, trying to figure out what the hell she'd said or done wrong. She'd just said she was glad he was there, for fuck's sake; what was so bad about that?

"I'll see you… later," he said, uncharacteristically noncommittal, and a flare of panic licked up her throat.

"Wait, let me give you a ride home, at least."

"I'll walk." He was already doing it, moving away from her.

She lurched after him, grabbed his arm. "Jaime, it's miles to your place. Just let me--"

He spun around to her, and the raw hurt in his eyes went to her heart like a lightning bolt. " _Brienne._ Just leave it, okay? Just… leave it."

For the first time all night, tears swam into her eyes, but she nodded and let her hand fall from his arm. And this time, when he walked away, she let him.

* * * * * * *

Thankfully, her dad was asleep by the time she got back, so she could go straight to her room, scrub away the makeup that Margaery had studiously applied, and relegate the the obviously cursed dress to a heap in the corner. She pulled on flannel pajama pants and dug through her drawer until she found a custom t-shirt that she'd had made a few years back. On it was a silhouette that Jaime had drawn, of Goldenhand and the Blue Knight sparring; she'd fallen in love with the sketch as soon as he'd shown it to her, had stolen it from him when he wasn't looking and ordered t-shirts for them both, proudly presenting his to him on his nameday and watching the delighted smile spread across his face like dawn breaking. It made her eyes burn now, remembering it, made her yank the shirt on over her head before curling up in a miserable ball on the bed.

She and Jaime fought all the time, but it tended to be over external things: sports, books, movies, occasionally their family or friends. And even when they were pissed off at each other, they let each other know exactly why, usually at the tops of their lungs. They didn't do mystery, they didn't do the silent treatment, they didn't do walking away without an explanation, and with all the changes on the horizon in Brienne's life, the thought of somehow losing Jaime, losing step with him, terrified her in the way that a roadtrip across the country never would.

And worst of all, she'd hurt him somehow, the same boy whose relationship with most of his family was so toxic that he'd attached himself to her and her dad like some kind of golden-haired koala. He'd chosen them, over and over again, laughed with her and stood up for her and trusted her with his deepest secrets--every secret, she guessed, except what had driven him away from her tonight.

She closed her eyes, praying that any minute now she'd wake up to find that the whole thoroughly, epically failed evening had been nothing but an anxiety-fueled nightmare. But no matter how long she tossed and turned, how many breathing exercises she tried, she couldn't shake the image of his face; she'd literally stabbed him once, in the shoulder, when they'd graduated too early from foam swords to blunted metal ones, and still he hadn't looked at her like that. 

He'd told her to leave it alone, and after tonight, she would. She couldn't sleep, though, until she'd at least tried to apologize for whatever it was that she'd done. She threw on a sweatshirt and her shoes, grabbed the closest set of car keys available, left her dad a note just in case, and headed out.

* * * * * *

Jaime actually did have an apartment of his own, but he still slept at his old house a decent percentage of the time, often when he'd been hanging out late with Brienne and didn't want to make the longer drive to his place. She guessed a therapist might have had something to say about his inability to leave his childhood behind; in this particular scenario, though, she wasn't really excited about traipsing through the lobby of his building in her pajamas, so when she pulled up in her long-established spot along the curb in front of the stately Lannister house and saw a light burning in his room, she breathed a sigh of relief.

The late spring air was crisp, but still held a faint memory of warmth as she got out of the car and closed the door as softly as she could. The tree that stood along the side of the house had grown thicker and taller at roughly the same pace that Brienne and Jaime had, so it didn't fail her now, supporting her like it always did while she clambered up it and onto the second-story roof. She peered into Jaime's window to scout the terrain before she moved in. He was awake--and, she couldn't help but notice, shirtless--sitting up in his bed, his pencil making angry-looking slashes on the page of the sketchbook in front of him.

She took a deep breath, and tapped on the window.

He jolted. She could see the tension snap into his bared shoulders, then flow out again as he recognized her, then flow right back in. He tossed the sketchbook aside and climbed out of bed. Fortunately for both of them, he was at least wearing pants, though they seemed to be precariously tied and hung low enough on his hips to make her blush.

It occurred to her that this was one of the many reasons that friends usually gave each other a heads-up before one of them showed up at the other's house in the middle of the night.

He cracked the window open. "You shouldn't be here," he told her, his expression mulish and shrouded. "My father gets jumpy about people climbing around on the roof."

"Oh, so I'm _people_ , now?" she asked, stung. "And besides, you already told me he's out of town until next week, and even Tyrion is at a sleepover, so I'm not buying."

The hint of a wince creased the edges of his eyes. Despite the smooth mask of control that he often wore for other people, she could see the misery written all over him, and her heart twisted.

"Jaime," she blurted out, "whatever I did, I'm sorry, all right? I'm really sorry. Can I just--can I come in for a minute? Please?"

For a long moment, he just looked at her, then he sighed and slid the window open the rest of the way, reaching up to remove the screen so she could tumble inside.

"What are you working on?" she asked him while he closed the window again. She was stalling, mostly, curling one leg under her on the bed, fingers stretching toward the sketchbook.

"Nothing," he answered, quick and sharp; he closed the book with a snap and tucked it under his thigh as he sat down next to her.

She frowned and gnawed at the corner of her lip, a bad habit she'd mostly broken. "Okay, right. No small talk. I guess…" She trailed off, then squared her shoulders. "I guess I came here to say that whatever it was I did to upset you, I'm sorry. And if you tell me what it was, I promise I'll never do it again."

One of his hands came up out of his lap, like he was going to touch her, then settled back again. He lifted a shoulder. "You didn't do anything, Brienne." It was the second time tonight he'd used her actual name, and it somehow made her chest ache more than any cruel taunt she'd ever had thrown at her. "I just think we need a little space for a while."

"I'm leaving in a month," she pointed out. "You'll have all the space you want, then." She tried and failed to keep the despair out of her voice. She missed him already, and she couldn't face the thought of spending what little time they had left avoiding each other. 

"Don't you think I know that?" he snapped. "Don't you think I--" He stood up, restless energy pouring off him, and the sketchbook fell out from under his leg and onto the floor. Brienne glanced down at it without thinking, and when it fell open, she saw… her own face on the page, looking back up at her.

Well, not looking _at_ her, exactly; he'd drawn her laughing, looking off to the side, happy crinkles at the edges of her eyes and her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She'd always admired his talent, and while he'd captured all her features faithfully--wide mouth, crooked nose, scar above her lip, freckles everywhere--somehow the whole was engaging, arresting, miles away from how she'd ever seen herself.

She looked up at Jaime, and he was watching her defiantly, a stubborn set to his chin, like he was daring her into a fight. Slowly, giving him plenty of time to stop her, she reached down and picked up the sketchbook. 

She flipped past the occasional dragon or lion or dog or some obscure bit of heraldry, but mostly, it was full of images of her: smirking, sparring, working on her beloved old car, stretched out in the tree that she'd just climbed, asleep on her couch at home with her mouth half-open, smiling soft and shy up off the page. When she got to the most recent sketch--the one with an uncontrolled slash of graphite across it, where she'd startled him--her breath clogged in her lungs. In it, she was wearing the dress she'd had on earlier, floating around her and leaving the strong lines of her shoulders almost bare, and through Jaime's eyes, she could see how maybe Sansa had been right about that dress; but he'd drawn her small, like she was far away, illuminated by a pool of light and nothing but darkness filling the space between. 

There was longing in every line of it. And it wasn't just that, either. 

She'd always known that Jaime loved her, but. Holy shit. 

Jaime _loved_ her.

She looked back up at him. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, all the moments in all the long years they'd spent together rearranging themselves like a kaleidoscope in her mind.

He shrugged, a tight jerk of his shoulders. "You didn't seem like you wanted to hear it."

"I… you had Cersei," was all she could think of. Cersei and the not-insignificant hole that Jaime's obsession with her had left in their friendship.

"That ended two years ago," he said, almost a growl, "and I've told you a million times that I'm sorry for what happened back then."

"But you're... _you_ ," Brienne managed, waving a hand at him, "and I'm--"

"Amazing?" he interrupted, and he sounded more than a little angry about it. "Smart and witty and _interesting_ and you don't take shit from anybody, but you're also the kindest person I've ever met. And you're just… _true_ , and strong, and brave, and a fucking _force_ , and you and your dad took me in when I was a miserable little shit, you let me be part of your family, and just. How the fuck was I supposed to _not_ fall in love with you?"

And if realizing in the privacy of her own mind that Jaime loved her had shaken her, then actually hearing him _say_ it was like the world flipping completely upside down. Except when she looked at him, nothing seemed different at all: he was still Jaime, still snarky and soft and smarter than most people gave him credit for, still--she could think about it now--really, incredibly, unfairly handsome, with the glow from the bedside lamp reflecting off all that golden skin, the ropes of muscle underneath. He was still Jaime, and he loved her, and loving him back was the easiest thing in the world, after the strain of _not_ letting herself love him, all these years.

She stood up, slowly, and he tensed, visibly unsure of what to expect. She cleared her throat. "I think I need some more practice," she said, feeling her own pulse start to throb in her wrists, her neck, thudding against her ribcage.

He blinked. "Practice?"

"Yeah." She closed the short distance between them, and slid her hands around the back of his neck. "You kind of cut our lesson short last night. And as much as I appreciate that you thought I was _soooo_ good at it, you know what a perfectionist I am."

His mouth was starting to curl on one side, the beginning of that smirk she liked a lot more than she'd ever admitted to him, but there was still hesitation on his face, like he couldn't quite believe that this was happening. Well, he could join the club. "Brienne," he said, and _oh_ , she didn't mind her name when he said it like that, "this can't be just--I'm not--"

"Jaime," she interrupted, rolling her eyes, "I love you too, _obviously_ ," and then she shut him up with a kiss. 

They'd done their tentative exploration the night before, so there was none of that now, just heat and inexorability, like opening the door of a forge and letting the oxygen rush in. The skin of his back was warm and smooth under her hands, his voice raspy as he murmured "I missed you" against her ear before closing his teeth around the lobe. They'd been separated for all of a few hours, but she knew exactly what he meant, and pulled him closer, her fingertips mapping every inch of him she could reach.

At some point his hands slipped beneath the hem of her shirt to caress the small of her back, and suddenly the amount of cloth between them was intolerable. Brienne backed off enough to shrug out of her sweatshirt, and Jaime watched with hot eyes while it hit the floor, then gave her one of those sunburst smiles again when he saw the t-shirt she was wearing underneath.

"Nice shirt."

"Thanks," she said, "this incredible artist drew it for me," and proceeded to pull it off over her head.

It left her as bare-chested as he was, and being exposed like that was mildly terrifying, but if she'd had any doubts that he really wanted her, they disappeared now, swamped by the sheer, unmitigated awe that consumed his face. "Wow. Nice… that," he managed, gesturing to her torso at large, and she bit her lip on a giggle.

" _That's_ your line?" she teased. He huffed out a laugh, his cheeks flushed red, and his mouth worked helplessly until she took pity on him. "How do you feel about moving this to the bed?" she asked, because they'd waited long enough, and she didn't want to wait anymore.

She saw his throat convulse. "I feel… great about that," he said, and then, shaking his head, "Whew. Best dream ever," so they were both laughing when they climbed under the covers.

It was a little strange, being surrounded by a dozen familiar sights--the soft red plaid of his bedspread, the distinctive shadows of his guitars clustered in a corner, the scattering of glow-in-the-dark constellations that they'd stuck on his ceiling on his thirteenth nameday as a vow that they'd use them for navigation on some great adventure someday--and having the devastatingly new sensation added of his tongue circling her nipple, the promising hard heat of him against her hip. But mostly it just felt good, and safe, and thrilling, and when they were both naked and shaking with need, he hovered over her and asked one more time, "Are you sure?" and she nodded eagerly, hungrily, and he pressed inside her.

Given Brienne's hobbies, she'd figured her hymen was long since a thing of the past, and she doubted she'd find a novelesque spot of blood on his sheets in the morning; still, the stretch of him was odd, and not entirely comfortable at first. But he went slow, though she could tell what it was costing him by the iron tension in his muscles, the needy noises he made every time he sank a little deeper. And then it wasn't odd anymore, it was wonderful, finding a new rhythm together, a new give and take bolstered by all of their old ones. Even with a condom to dull the edge of the sensation, he didn't last long, and when he shuddered on top of her and gasped an apology, she grinned and told him she was taking it as a compliment. 

As soon as he got his breath back, he promised to make it up to her, after which he promptly slid down the bed and proceeded to do exactly that. Multiple times.

Brienne found herself _incredibly_ grateful that no one else was home.

* * * * * * *

In the morning, she woke before he did, as usual, and though he was warm and solid and delightful against her, her bladder was insisting on attention. Fortunately Jaime was a heavy sleeper even when he hadn't been up half the night having a lot of sex, so she was able to wriggle her way out of his embrace without prompting much more than a snort and a sleepily disappointed noise, like a sad robot powering down. She slid on pajama pants that turned out to be hers and a t-shirt that turned out to be his; it was a little too small in the chest and shoulders, but she didn't mind, relishing the scent of him surrounding her.

By the time she'd subjected her bare feet to the tile floor of the bathroom and splashed water on her face after washing her hands, she was well and truly awake. Seized by inspiration, she padded quietly downstairs and outside, sucking in big lungfuls of the morning air when she emerged. The sun was peeking over the horizon, the birds were twittering, the trees were starting to bud, and if she'd known that sleeping with her best friend would put her in such a revoltingly good mood, she might've tried it months ago.

Once she'd retrieved what she needed from her car, she vaulted back upstairs two steps at a time and slipped back into Jaime's room to burrow under the covers again, watching the growing light play over the brightest highlights in his hair.

After about sixty seconds, she saw a crease appear between his eyebrows.

"I heard you come in, and I can feel you staring at me," he told her, sounding none too thrilled about it. 

"So then I guess you should just wake up already," she answered cheerfully.

He cracked one eyelid open, and though he was obviously trying to maintain a scowl, it melted into a smile as soon as he got a look at her, bedhead and pillow creases and all. Her heart flipped over in her chest.

"Hi," he said, sliding a hand along her thigh, up to her hip.

She grinned at him. "Hi."

He gave a jaw-cracking yawn, then blinked at her owlishly. "Hey, I thought you didn't have sex on the first date." His voice was sleep-rough and lazy, making heat coil in the pit of her stomach, but there was no way she was letting him know that yet.

Instead, she snorted at him. "I feel like I should clarify that there's nothing wrong with having sex on the first date, but also: you think me climbing in your window counts as a date? Really? This explains a lot."

"So, what, you're saying you had sex with me on the zero-th date?" He rolled his head on the pillow. "The null date?" he tried instead, workshopping it.

"I'm saying," she told him, "we had our first date ten years ago when you helped me fend off those little assholes, and we've had about five hundred since then, so your whole premise is flawed, so shut up."

He smiled beatifically. "I'm good with that," he said, and leaned in to kiss her.

When he pulled back, his smile had gone even goofier. "Hi," he said again, and the worst part was, she thought it was adorable.

"Oh, gods. We're going to be one of those disgusting couples, aren't we?" Not that she could see herself being _quite_ this openly besotted in public, but even a fraction of her current level was going to be a ten thousand percent increase of sot over anything she'd been before, and Jaime, for his part, was plainly going to break the scale. 

Sure enough, "I definitely hope so," he answered. "Sansa and Margaery have held the title for too long; we must challenge them."

She snickered at that. "Good point. And in that case, no time like the present." Taking the opportunity for the segue, she reached off the side of the bed, down into the backpack she'd brought up with her, and fished out the jeweler's box, which had been--thankfully--abandoned along with Renly's dessert. 

When she held it out to him, his eyes widened. "Ohhhh," he breathed, almost reverently. He slid the cuff out of the box, let it catch the light. "I wanted this," he admitted, grinning softly at her, and she couldn't help grinning back.

"It comes with strings, though," she warned him. "Will you come with me?"

He pretended to consider it. "Hmm, I don't know. Go on a road trip with you, watching you change the world one lost soul at a time, or become a soulless attack dog for my father's evil company?" He sucked in breath between his teeth. "Really tough call, here."

She stuck out her tongue at him and snatched the cuff back, though only with the intention of fastening it on for him. As she inspected the underside to find the right angle on the clasp, she saw the two tiny stamps she'd asked to have put there at the last minute, like a maker's mark: a lion and a star, winking back at her from the soft leather. She would have explained them to Renly as Goldenhand's and the Blue Knight's sigils, and that wasn't untrue; but that had never been what she'd really meant by them, not in her heart. And maybe, too, there was a reason she'd chosen to highlight the gold in the Baratheon colors instead of the black.

"You know what?" she said to Jaime, wondering, as she smoothed the cuff around his wrist. "I think I always meant this to be for you."

His smile was almost blinding. "No shit, Blue," he murmured, and tugged her close for a kiss.


End file.
